babble is rabble.ca's discussion board but it's much more than that: it's an online community for folks who just won't shut up. It's a place to tell each other — and the world — what's up with our work and campaigns.

From what I understand it's related to the 'sovereign citizen movement' in the U.S. A lot of it is based on a belief that the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution illegitimately created a new class of citizens, U.S. citizens; whereas previously, people were only citizens of their respective states. Because 'sovereign citizens' believe that the 14th Amendment is illegitimate, they largely reject any obligations placed on them by the federal government as a result of their citizenship. There's also a belief that federal laws only apply to the documents that the government has connected to you in the form of social security number, birth certificate, licenses, etc. If a person abides by federal laws they can be seen as tacitly accepting that they and their paperwork are, in fact, the same 'person', thereby giving up their rights as a 'sovereign citizen'. They believe that by aggressively disassociating oneself from these documents one can more or less exempt oneself from federal laws.

It was actually pretty entertaining listening to my co-workers recount, with great exasperation, an afternoon spent trying to convince Bell to reconnect their phone which had been disconnected for non-payment of bills. They were incredulous that Bell wouldn't recognize their repeated utterance of some crypto-legal phrase as the equivalent of having been paid in full.

it seems like their entire idea is to find a loophole so that they're not subject to the laws of the place they live. I think they just don't understand power. The reason the state can tell you what to do is because it has the power to do so, regardless of your consent. It doesn't really matter if you can find some legal loophole based on an alternative definition of personhood if the institutions of the state don't recognize that. You're still stuck in their system.

Yeah, I read that and wondered a few things about it. Like how the article mentions it's both left wing and right wing... then goes on to talk about how all the problems seem to be coming from right wing extremists.

It's not surprising. Take a look at this, and "Occupy" and "Iddle No More". Fewer and fewer people look to the system as an agent of either change or a way to solve problems effecting them, so they are looking outside the system.

And well they should.

It's not surprising some will take the form of admittedly stupid things like "Freemen on the Land". Tee Hee.

But the constant in all this is whether you are a gun tottin' extremist or someone involved in peacefull protest outside the system, the answer from law enforcement is the same either way.

I have a streak of freewoman ... I think we should be able to camp on a roadside , have weapons for small game, build a fire and cook, have a beer and sleep, live freely on the water in boats too ... without some cop I'M PAYING telling me to move to a paying accommodation establishment!
/end rant
But I'm not going to insist. :)
And I don't camp rough anymore anyway ... but I think ,we should be able to... when we have to.

I have a streak of freewoman ... I think we should be able to camp on a roadside , have weapons for small game, build a fire and cook, have a beer and sleep, live freely on the water in boats too ... without some cop I'M PAYING telling me to move to a paying accommodation establishment!

I think there's a world of difference between the belief that one should have the right to the necessities of life and freedom of movement, and the pseudolegal fraud that the FOTL peddle.

Yeah, I read that and wondered a few things about it. Like how the article mentions it's both left wing and right wing... then goes on to talk about how all the problems seem to be coming from right wing extremists.

It's not surprising. Take a look at this, and "Occupy" and "Iddle No More". Fewer and fewer people look to the system as an agent of either change or a way to solve problems effecting them, so they are looking outside the system.

And well they should.

It's not surprising some will take the form of admittedly stupid things like "Freemen on the Land". Tee Hee.

But the constant in all this is whether you are a gun tottin' extremist or someone involved in peacefull protest outside the system, the answer from law enforcement is the same either way.

From what I've seen on YouTube, FOTL seems to appealing to the kind of guys who like to sit around bragging about how they flip off cops and about how "the cops couldn't touch me, man". It kind of promises to make every bar-stool BSer's dream come true.

I'm guessing that the supposed "left-wing" faction of Freemen mostly consists of marijuana growers, whom the media often lumps in with the left. Interestingly, unlike previous manifestations of American style anti-state ideologies(the militias etc), the Freemen seem to have caught on in the UK.

arielc, you'd like the laws in Finland. They call it "everyman's law" (every person's law?). What it means is that on any property belonging to the government or crown, you can camp and pick berries and vegetation and such.

That said, that's a far cry from "freeman" stuff. People in Finland pay very heavy taxes (which, of course, "Freemen" don't agree with), and that belief in taxes paying for public goods for everyone coexists just fine with the idea that public lands can be used by everyone for any peaceful reason.